The following are excerpts from an address by Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, which aired on Al-Manar TV on November 30, 2009.

Hassan Nasrallah: The path of US-Israeli arrogance and domination, with its various dimensions, and with its direct and indirect extensions and alliances, which is witnessing military defeats and political failures, reflected successive defeats for the American strategies and plans, one after the other. All this has led [the US] to a state of indecision, retreat, and inability to control the progress of events in our Arab and Islamic world. There is a broader international context for this – a context that, in its turn, helps to expose the American crisis, and the decline of the [US] unipolar hegemony, in the face of pluralism, the characteristics of which are yet to be stabilized.

The crisis of the arrogant world order is deepened by the collapse of US and international stock markets, and by the confusion and powerlessness of the American economy. This reflects the height of the structural crisis of the model of capitalist arrogance. Therefore, it can be said that we are in the midst of historic transformations that foretell the retreat of the USA as a hegemonic power, the disintegration of the unipolar hegemonic order, and the beginning of the accelerated historic decline of the Zionist entity.

The resistance movements stand at the core of these transformations, and emerge as a basic, strategic factor in this international scene, having played a major role in producing those transformations in our region. The resistance in Lebanon, including our Islamic resistance, was the first to confront hegemony and occupation, more than two and a half decades ago. It adhered to this option, at a time that seemed like the inauguration of an American era, which some tried to characterize as the end of history.

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After World War II, the US has adopted the leading, central hegemonic project. At its hands, this project has witnessed great development of the means of control and unprecedented subjugation. It has benefited from an accumulation of multi-faceted accomplishments in science, culture, technology, knowledge, economy, and the military, which was supported by an economic political plan that views the world as nothing but open markets subject to the laws of [the US].

The most dangerous aspect of Western logic of hegemony in general, and the American logic of hegemony in particular, is their basic belief that they own the world, and have the right to hegemony due to their supremacy in several fields. Thus, the Western, and especially American, expansionist strategy, when coupled with the enterprise of capitalist economy, has become a strategy of a global nature, whose covetous desires and appetite know no bounds.

The barbaric capitalism has turned globalism into a means to spread disintegration, to sow discord, to destroy identities, and to impose the most dangerous form of cultural, economic, and social plunder. Globalization reached its most dangerous phase, when it was transformed into military globalization by the owners of the Western hegemony enterprise, the greatest manifestation of which was evident in the Middle East, from Afghanistan to Iraq, to Palestine, and to Lebanon.

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The US administration did not hesitate to resort to methods of lying and deception in order to justify its wars, especially its war against Iraq, and against whoever fights its new colonialist plan – countries, movements, forces, and individuals. In this context, this administration has labored to portray terrorism and resistance as identical, in order to rob the resistance of its human and legal legitimacy.

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There is no doubt that American terrorism is the source of all terrorism in the world. The Bush administration has turned the US into a danger threatening the whole world, on all levels. If a global opinion poll were held today, the United States would emerge as the most hated country in the world.

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The failures of the [US] and so on have led to a corrosion in the reverence with which the US is viewed in the world, and to a strategic decline in the ability of the US to take action, or to embark on new adventures.

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The most important goal of American arrogance is to take control of the peoples politically, economically, and culturally, and to plunder their resources.

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The American danger is not a local one, and it is not confined to a specific region. Therefore, the front of confrontation with this American danger should be global as well. There is no doubt that this confrontation is difficult and delicate. It is a battle of historic dimensions. Therefore, it is the battle of generations, and requires the use of any possible force.

Our experience in Lebanon has taught us that difficulty does not spell impossibility. On the contrary. Nations that are alive and whose leaderships are wise are prepared for all possibilities, and place their trust in an accumulation of accomplishments, thus attaining one victory after another. As much as this is true in the vertical sense of history, it is also true in the horizontal sense of geography and geo-politics. American arrogance has left our nation and its peoples no option but the option of resistance. Unfortunately, we cannot view America as a friend.